A Supreme Court verdict passed in the 70s’ is all set to haunt the Income Tax department, which has all these years failed to act on it.

The verdict pronounced in 1976 set aside a Gauhati High Court judgment that had exempted one RT Rymbai from paying income tax.

The can of worms was opened in a case between the Meghalaya Cooperative Apex Bank (MCAB) and the IT department, which failed to return the tax deducted “illegally” from the bank.

Although the Supreme Court judgment provided arms for the IT department and its legal counsels to pursue its case of imposing income tax on tribals living in non-Scheduled areas, they have all along been ignoring the apex court order allegedly in order to cater to the sentiment of local public, a source pointed out.

The revelation about the Supreme Court judgment led to the recent order by the Meghalaya High Court asking the IT department to find out under what law the tribals living in municipal areas are exempted from paying income tax.

As per the practice, if not law, no indigenous tribal living or serving in any part of Meghalaya have to pay income tax. They are said to be exempted under the section 10 (26) of the Income Tax Act 1961.

As per the clause 26 of Section 10, which lists “incomes not included in total income”, a person is exempted from paying income tax provided – a) he or she is a member of a Scheduled Tribe, b) resides in the Scheduled area and c) the income concerned is generated from any source in the Scheduled areas or by way of dividend or interest on securities.

In the case of RT Rymbai, an Assam Civil Service (ACS) officer of 1941, the Gauhati High Court termed the Section 10 (26) “discriminatory” as the Section warrants a tribal staying in a non-Scheduled area within the state to pay income tax.

Rymbai had approached the high court when income tax was imposed on him during his posting in Shillong as a secretary to the government of Assam in 1970-71.

He had argued that the Section 10 (26) is discriminatory as his colleagues serving a few kilometers away in the non-Scheduled area within Shillong are exempted.

He got relief from the Gauhati High Court which termed the clause “discriminatory”, but it was subsequently set aside by the Supreme Court in 1976 as the IT department challenged the HC order.

But, the legal counsels of the IT department had never in all subsequent cases after RT Rymbai’s referred to the Supreme Court verdict while defending the department against individuals or entities.

Meanwhile, a source pointed out, a lot of things changed in terms of number of employees in the government departments after creation of the state in 1972.

“There were more and more tribal employees in the government offices and their people were also engaged in business, supply and building contracts and most of the people resided in the municipal areas of Shillong,” the source said adding, “A strict implementation of the Section 10 (26) would have meant an uprising against the government then.”

“Moreover, in the IT department itself a lot of tribal employees joined and thus vested interests cropped up,” the source added.

Meanwhile, the case between the IT department and MCAB is set to be delayed with the fresh High Court order to the department to find out the legal ground under which tribals, including wealthy ones, are exempted from paying the income tax.

MCAB’s counsel VK Jindal already appealed to the High Court to separate his matter related to the bank from the other issues the court laid stress upon.

The MCAB had sued the IT department seeking refund of the entire income tax it deducted “at source” besides the interest upon it for the past 10 years.

The department had deducted the tax amounting to around Rs 3 crore from the interest the bank earned from investments made by some financial institutions in 2002.

“All cooperative banks are exempted from paying income tax. However, the IT department argued that the bank is located in a non-Scheduled area (European Ward) in Shillong and so is liable to pay income tax,” advocate Jindal told The Meghalaya Guardian.

The bank had already been refunded part of the tax, but the former filed the lawsuit seeking the entire amount and interest for the delay of over 10 years.

SHILLONG: The Meghalaya High Court today ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to seize all documents of 12 high-rise buildings identified by a committee to have flouted building bye laws.

Acting Chief Justice Uma Nath Singh, who passed the order in presence of the two other judges, also referred the matter suo motto to a full bench, indicating gravity of the matter.

Sources say this is the first time the full bench of the Meghalaya High Court, since its establishment on March 23 last year, has taken up any case for hearing.

Justice Singh issued the order for seizure of the buildings’ documents on the basis of a report submitted by an eight-member committee constituted by a double bench of the High Court on September 4 this year.

While issuing the seizure order, he also directed the CBI Shillong to produce the documents in the next hearing of the case on December 5.

The court was hearing the case on the basis of a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by advocate JM Thankiew alleging rampant violation of the building bye laws of the Meghalaya Urban Development Authority (MUDA).

However, the committee found building law violators only in eight of the 19 areas.

The highest number of building law violators is from Bivar Road where three buildings were found to have flouted the laws.

In Jail Road, two buildings have been found to have flouted the norms, followed one each in Police Bazar, Thana Road, Oakland Road, Keating Road, Laban and Motinagar.

However, sources say given the number of high-rise buildings in some of these areas, finding only 12 buildings as violators of the bye laws is something which can be far from the truth.

According to MUDA provisions, no private building can exceed G+3 (ground plus 3 floors) limit.

Asked, deputy commissioner Sanjay Goyal, who headed the committee, told The Meghalaya Guardian that the mandate given to the committee was only to inspect the under-construction buildings and not completed ones.

He also mentioned that he was out of the state for training when the committee filed the report on October 16 this year.

(Published in lead story in The Meghalaya Guardian on November 29, 2014)

subsidy scamThe Central government has lost crores of rupees by doling out subsidy to non-existing industrial units in Meghalaya, at a time when industrial growth still remains a far cry in the state.At least nine industrial units, all in the Export Promotion Industrial Park (EPIP), ceased to exist, but not before enjoying a subsidy of nearly Rs 6 crore in the past 15 years.

The information was revealed by the Commerce and Industries department in reply to a RTI query by Tennydard M Marak, a person known for his prolonged legal battle against the ST status of chief minister Mukul Sangma.

The Commerce and Industries department detected the anomalies during a recent inspection and yet to find out since when these industries shut their operation or whether they did not start any operation at all.

“The matter is under investigation and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the state assembly,” said W Langstang, director of Commerce and Industries.

Action will be taken against some of these industries if found responsible for wastage of public money, he added while refusing to divulge any more information on the under-investigation matter.

Among these non-existing industries, Bomber Cement Plang and Shree Ganapati Rolling Mills were the oldest ones, established in 1999 while Trishul Hi-Tech was the newest, set up in 2006.

Subsidies enjoyed by these industries include capital investment (30%), insurance (100%), transport (90%), power ((3%) and interest on working capital (3%).

The entire subsidy is provided by the Centre to industrial units through the North Eastern Development Finance Corporation Ltd (NEDFi).

Most lucrative among these subsidies, for unscrupulous traders, is the transport subsidy which can be manipulated with minimum chance of getting detected.

Although the Central government provides the subsidy to boost industrial growth in the North-east, many companies exploit the government scheme solely for personal benefit without fulfilling any part of the basic objective.

Tribal ‘proprietor’

In a letter written to the department, the RTI applicant Tennydard M Marak raised questions about only one tribal among the three- to seven “proprietors” in each of the nine industries.

For example, Nezone Alloys had only one tribal, Delicent P Marak, among its seven proprietors.

Indicating that this might be the case even with other existing industries, Tennydard said, “The objective of the Industrial Policy 1997 is to give preference to local entrepreneurs in setting up large, medium and small-scale units, but the proportion of local entrepreneurs reveals a different picture.”

However, director of Commerce and Industries W Langstang defending the allotment of license to the companies, saying the existing norms require at least one indigenous tribal proprietor among the proprietors.

“The idea is to let the tribal proprietor gather necessary skills and business acumen to be able to set up his own industry in future,” he said.

An alleged sex worker waiting for ‘customers’ at the gate of the lane near Silchar Sadar police station.

Decades-old red-light area a stone’s throw away from police station

An organised red-light area with around 15 brothels just around 200 metres away from Silchar Sadar police station in Assam! This is all but true, and the more shameful truth is that policemen are the “guardians” of these brothels!

Two former sex workers from Shillong – one escaped and the other rescued from these brothels in 2012 – led a team of Meghalaya and Assam police recently to rescue one more woman, who spend five years there after being lured away by a pimp for a job.

“All the houses, around 14-15, in the lane run the dhanda (prostitution),” Lila (name changed), who ran away from there last year, told The Meghalaya Guardian.

“It’s like a jail. During my two years of stay, I was hardly allowed to come out of it. Once in a blue moon we were allowed to go for shopping but there would be people around us.

“We cannot even ask for police help since we know they are regularly paid by our owners,” Lila said.

Sources in Meghalaya police aware of the existence of the red-light area also expressed surprise, saying, “It is very strange that such a set up exists just near the police station. We can vouch that such things cannot exist even for an hour in Shillong.”

The raid, conducted in the wee hours of November 20 on the basis of an FIR filed by Lila in Shillong that there were women from Meghalaya held captive in the brothels, was allegedly delayed by the Assam police giving enough time for the trafficking racket to hide the girls.

“According to the initial plan made with Assam CID, the joint police team from Shillong and Guwahati was supposed to make a surprise raid without informing the local police. But the police team from Guwahati led us to the Silchar Sadar police station where we had to wait for hours,” said Agnes Kharshiing, president of Civil Society Women’s Organisation (CSWO).

Kharshiing was accompanying the Meghalaya police team since she was involved in the rescue of the two girls last year from the same brothel.

“We failed to understand the reason behind taking us to the same police station, against which the girls gave statements,” Kharshiing said.

“The entrance was just 200 metres away and there were shortcuts too to allow any policeman of the police station to alert the brothel owners,” she added.

“The Meghalaya police team was helpless in front of the Assam police since it was their area,” Lila, who now wants to be a whistleblower against women trafficking, said.

Lila and Evelyn (name changed), both from Shillong, made no hesitation in revealing that the Assam police personnel were utterly apathetic towards conducting the raid.

“One senior policeman was even asking for cigarette from the No. 2 brothel owner, Suku Debnath, during the raid,” Lila said.

Though police rescued one woman and her child from Debnath’s brothel, the latter was not arrested.

“Suku Debnath used to claim before us that she pays Rs 30,000 to the police station every month insisting us to ‘work’ day and night,” Lila, who spent around five years before being rescued in 2012, alleged.

Meanwhile, sources in the Assam police from Guwahati also admitted existence of the organised red-light area near the Silchar Sadar police station.

The sources also said the brothels have been running at the same place for decades.

In fact, Evelyn, who was rescued after Lila’s escape, was caught by policemen on guard at the gate of the lane one midnight when she was trying to escape along with a sympathetic ‘customer’.

“The policemen took money from the person, who was from Jowai, and asked him to leave and brought me to the police station. I was taken back to the No. 14 brothel by my owner Gita the next morning. She gave money to the cops in front of me and scolded me that she had to pay for my ‘fault’,” Evelyn said.

Both Evelyn and Lila are now staying in the same house with Lila’s family and doing part time jobs of housekeeping in Shillong.

(Published in The Meghalaya Guardian as lead story on January 24, 2014)

Limestone caves in Meghalaya shot to global fame with a Swiss caver, Thomas Arbenz, winning the maiden France Habe award for his book written after ten years of caving in Jaintia Hills.

Arbenz was chosen by the International Union of Speleology (UIS) for the award introduced with an objective of protecting caves, karstic zone, or underground environment in general across the world.

The writer, who makes it a point to visit Meghalaya every year to spend weeks inside the caves in February-March, surpassed four other nominees to bag the award.

The award announced at the 16th International Congress of Speleology meant a lot for Meghalaya as it highlighted the significance of the caves, many of them threatened by rampant limestone mining, in a global context.

In an online chat with The Meghalaya Guardian, the writer expressed his gratitude to the “hospitable” people of Meghalaya especially the Jaintias.

“This (writing the book) feat would not have been possible without their cooperation,” he said.

The Meghalaya Adventurers’ Association (MAA), the pioneer of cave tourism in the State, also bagged its share of appreciation from the writer.

MAA led by its president Brian D Kharpran Daly, an earnest caver and writer, has been the sole organiser of annual packaged tours into the caves of Jaintia Hills, which are famous for their length and density.

“The book is a great addition to the wealth of information of the caves and karsts of that part of Meghalaya and would be a useful reference to researchers in the universities and colleges,” Brian Kharpran said.

BY RATUL BARUAH SHILLONG, NOV 21: Boating on a river inside a cave sounds unreal, but not anymore. Five adventurers including two foreigners set the record, first time in India and perhaps in the world, of kayaking and rafting inside a cave in Jaintia Hills, the den of some of the world’s longest limestone caves.

“ Kayaking was never so thrilling for us,” say Dan Rea- Dickins and Joe Rea- Dickins, both brothers from UK. The brothers duo, in their early twenties, did kayaking in many major rivers of the world including in Africa and India.

“ We are not experts in caving. But we have not heard anyone in the world attempting such an expedition,” Dan ( 21), who took up the oars at the age of 11, told The Meghalaya Guardian here.

The team of five took around 5.5 hours to sail along the 3.5- km- long river cave “ Krem Chympe”. The river cave has a series of very large and deep lakes, formed by the existence of more than 50 natural dams or gorges, 6 to 8 metre high.

With 10.5 km of surveyed length it is currently India’s fifth longest cave.

Cavers including foreign tourists in the past swam the stretch of the river, but no one has even thought of kayaking inside the cave.

The expedition team entered the mouth of the cave at Sielkan in East Jaintia Hills district with three ‘ packraft’s and two kayaks and ended up their voyage at Moolian where the cave has another entrance.

The brother duo came to Meghalaya for the second time after last year and covered almost east and every major rivers of Khasi- Jaintia region.

The other members of the team were Zorba Z Laloo, Gregory Diengdoh, and Banjop Iawphniaw.

Expressing his delight over success of the remarkable expedition, veteran caver of Meghalaya, Bryan Kharpran, said, “ This is the first such expedition in the world as far as my knowledge is concerned.” Kharpran, who founded Meghalaya Adventurers’ Association, said the Krem Chympe is one of the most unique caves and the government should take the initiative to promote it in global media.

He suggested that the organizations like the National Geographic should be invited to make a proper documentary on the cave.